A collection of things that I was happy I read. Views expressed by linked authors are chosen because I think they're interesting, not because I think they're correct, unless indicated otherwise.

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Blog:Marginal Revolution | How well is Germany dealing with the migration crisis? — "Whatever respite Germany may have gained this week is offset, and then some, by the arrival of a new and frightening political dynamic. Mr. Seehofer succeeded by going nuclear; chances are, he won’t be the last. The politics of fear and menace may be here to stay, undermining the foundations of democracy. In sound democracies, policies are the results of compromise between parties representing a majority of the voters. Through the politics of artificial crisis, minorities take the system hostage. They create policies redeeming fictional problems for fictional

I was asked on Monday by a friend if I was going to write about the goings-on at Yale. I will at some point, but now's not the time.

A little more than two and a half years ago, our school spent a day on lockdown after a twenty-one-year-old shot a police officer at MIT and drove through our campus on his way to Watertown, where he would eventually be captured by police.

We stayed in our dorms, not knowing whether he was just outside the door. He probably wasn't anywhere near campus, the rumors went, but better to keep the doors locked, just to be sure. I lived just next door to my friends, but I didn't dare to step outside for the ten seconds it would have taken me to get from my door to theirs.

I've written before about the moment that we raised our voices together, after the campus had begun to open up again, but I haven't said much about the terror of that day

Dear everyone posting That Video to Facebook today:
Yes, there was another shooting. VA this time, caught on live news.

Yes, the murderer (no, he doesn't deserve to be named) filmed his victims' deaths and immediately posted them to his Facebook and Twitter.

No, you're not obligated to help him out by publicizing them. All that does is put attention on the wrong person, make the victims' friends and families miserable, inspire imitators, and give the murderer exactly what he wanted. So please, knock it off.

He was more timely than I, but I've still got a few short things to add on.

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In the days since, we've learned that the killer wrote a manifesto calling for a race war. This is probably good grounds for rounding up everyone who helped to publicize the last killer who wrote a manifesto calling for a race war, and give them a stern talking-to about how, yes, their carelessness has real

I am so far beyond caring about where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ends up that I'm refusing to click on that link, and won't give you a hyperlink here; feel free to search it up on your own, if you like. I am aggressively refusing to care.

Or at least, aggressively refusing to indulge in anything that would incite me to care more than I can possibly avoid.

I mean, look, you can hate the kid. You can meditate on the violence he perpetrated against the city of Boston and the fear that he and his brother struck across our city for days, plural, of 2013. You can follow the news of his trial, conviction, and imprisonment with a carefully-stoked bloodthirst, and feel a measure of closure on behalf of our city when he gets put away for life without parole, or executed.[1] You can live a life where

A year ago, the school (and the city) was just getting off lockdown after the manhunt for the marathon bombing suspect(s). And looking backward, there's a few things I remember quite clearly:

the spreadsheet of students offering couch space, spare beds, and sleeping bags to 'stranded' students unsure if it was safe to be crossing campus

the Dining Services workers who crossed a city on lockdown (by bike, as I recall) to come in to work, and the students who volunteered to work the dining hall with them

the pre-frosh who came to Visitas Weekend despite its cancellation (including mine!), and the hosts who did everything they could to make their stay worth its while (in the fall, the school would announce record yield numbers...)

the sudden, temporary freedom from work -- afterward, a friend would recall "I've never felt so free as that day we were trapped inside!" I'm not sure what this says about Harvard.
But there's one thing in particular about what whole bizarre half-week that